Image: Gabe Thomas, Milag: cap­tives of the Kriegs­ma­rine. Mer­chant Navy pris­on­ers of war, Milag Pris­on­er of War Asso­ci­a­tion, 1995, p. 105.

Table of Con­tents
Camp­scape | Sta­lag X B Sand­bostel – Ilag and Milag  | Mar­lag and Milag Nord in Wes­t­er­imke  | Bre­men and Ham­burg har­bour  |  SourcesPoli­tis­ches Archiv des Auswär­ti­gen Amts   Impe­r­i­al War Muse­um, Lon­don  |  Bre­men and Ham­burg State Archive  |  Con­clu­sion  |  End­notes  |  Bib­li­og­ra­phy

South Asian civil­ian pris­on­ers in Ger­man cap­tiv­i­ty dur­ing World War II have received very lit­tle schol­ar­ly atten­tion. Where­as there has been exten­sive research on the South Asian sol­diers who have joined Sub­has Chan­dra Bose’s Azad Hind Fauj and pre­lim­i­nary research on ordi­nary cap­tives who had either cho­sen not to join the Indi­an Legion, as it was called in Ger­many, or were con­sid­ered unfit for it, South Asian civil­ian pris­on­ers do not play a role in either of these his­to­ri­ogra­phies. Yet, these cap­tives, main­ly Indi­an sea­men work­ing for the British Mer­chant or Roy­al Navy or Euro­pean ship­ping com­pa­nies, inhab­it­ed, for instance, the bar­racks of the camps in Sand­bostel and Wes­t­er­imke in north­ern Low­er Sax­ony and the make-shift arrange­ments in Ham­burg and Bremen.

In this essay, I will first out­line the his­toric con­text of South Asian civil­ian cap­tiv­i­ty in North­ern Ger­many by iden­ti­fy­ing, locat­ing and recon­struct­ing the for­ma­tion of the dif­fer­ent camps and intern­ment facil­i­ties. Sec­ond, I draw atten­tion to the sources, map­ping the archival land­scape and point­ing out the rel­e­vance of each hold­ing with­in the over­ar­ch­ing frame­work of the MIDA project and its Dig­i­tal Archival Reflex­i­con. Although I am dig­i­tal­ly reorder­ing the sources along the per­ti­nence prin­ci­ple, the prove­nance of the hold­ings is not lost as I start each sec­tion with sit­u­at­ing the respec­tive hold­ing in the struc­ture of its phys­i­cal repository.

Through­out the paper, I reflect and com­ment on pos­si­ble van­tage points for his­toric schol­ar­ship in this under researched field of study as they are emerg­ing out of this ten­ta­tive sur­vey on the material.

Campscape

Stalag X B Sandbostel – Ilag and Milag

Ini­tial­ly, the civil­ian pris­on­ers were interned in the Kriegs­ge­fan­genen-Mannschafts-Stamm­lager X B Sand­bostel, coined Sta­lag X B in mil­i­tary jar­gon. The camp, falling under the admin­is­tra­tion of Wehrkreis (war area) X, encom­pass­ing Schleswig-Hol­stein, Ham­burg, Bre­men and north­ern Low­er Sax­ony, was erect­ed in 1939 close to the vil­lage Sand­bostel, lend­ing its name to the facil­i­ty (Ehres­mann 2015). It was in oper­a­tion through­out the war until its lib­er­a­tion by the British army on April 29, 1945, hav­ing host­ed at least 313 000 civ­il and mil­i­tary pris­on­ers, thou­sands of whom died from dis­eases and phys­i­cal exhaus­tion. Sovi­et pris­on­ers in par­tic­u­lar suf­fered from the dis­as­trous con­di­tions and mis­treat­ment under inten­tion­al dis­re­gard of the Gene­va Con­ven­tion. Sta­lag X B was divid­ed into Ilag (Internierungslager) and Milag (Marine-Internierungslager). Where­as both host­ed offi­cers and ranks of the Mer­chant as well as the Roy­al Navy, colo­nial sea­men were only to be interned in Ilag. There were around 660 colo­nial sea­men cat­e­go­rized as Chi­nese, Indi­an, Arab and Malayan in Octo­ber 1941.[1] Most of them were cap­tured at sea when the Ger­man forces seized their ships. Dur­ing an inspec­tion of the camp in July 1941 by the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross, espe­cial­ly the hygien­ic facil­i­ties in both camps were con­sid­ered absolute­ly insuf­fi­cient and the pris­on­ers were observed to be lack­ing warm uni­forms and under­wear.[2] With the harsh Ger­man win­ter approach­ing, the Ger­man mil­i­tary tried to nego­ti­ate an agree­ment with Italy to send the civil­ians to one of their intern­ment camps. How­ev­er, the Ital­ian author­i­ties with­drew their ini­tial offi­cer, claim­ing to have exhaust­ed their capac­i­ties. Instead, the whole Ilag and Mar­lag branch of Sand­bostel was relo­cat­ed to a new camp 25 km towards the south, now being referred to as Mar­lag and Milag Nord.

Marlag and Milag Nord in Westerimke

In the course of the relo­ca­tion, around 380 Indi­an las­cars, along with the oth­er so-called coloured sea­men, were trans­ferred to Wes­t­er­imke close to Bre­men in Octo­ber 1941. The new facil­i­ty con­sist­ed of two camps espe­cial­ly cre­at­ed to accom­mo­date cap­tives of the British Mer­chant Navy, called Mar­lag and Milag (Marine-Internierungslager). There, the Indi­ans were accom­mo­dat­ed in the Milag branch of the camp, their num­bers now fig­ur­ing at 533.[3] As this camp, too, was ill equipped and South Asians con­sid­ered unfit to last the Ger­man win­ter, their depor­ta­tion to Italy was again debat­ed in Decem­ber 1941. In Feb­ru­ary of 1942, how­ev­er, 486 Indi­an civil­ians were still list­ed on the camp doc­u­ments.[4]

In 1943, anoth­er small camp was built in their vicin­i­ty to accom­mo­date the bulk of Indi­an, Ade­nese, Chi­nese and Burmese sea­men. Some 630 sea­men moved out of Milag to what came to be called the Inder Lager (Thomas 1995, p. 105). Sim­i­lar to the so-called Half­moon Camp in Zossen-Wüns­dorf dur­ing World War I, the South Asians were sep­a­rat­ed from their British offi­cers and exposed to pro-Ger­man pro­pa­gan­da in an attempt to find allies among the colo­nial sub­jects (Thomas 1995, p. 273). Not only did this endeav­our prove unsuc­cess­ful as only a few sea­men were recruit­ed to the Indi­an Legion, but the com­man­ders of the camp met with var­i­ous inci­dents of pas­sive resis­tance from the inmates, both in Sand­bostel and Wes­t­er­imke (Thomas 1995, 272f; Lane 1990, 284). The damp cli­mate of North­ern Ger­many, lack of fuel, food and suf­fi­cient cloth­ing, as well as the dis­re­gard of the dietary cus­toms of the pre­dom­i­nant­ly Mus­lim inhab­i­tants of the Inder Lager made every­day life an unpleas­ant expe­ri­ence. Red Cross Parcels with rations bare­ly reached the camp and the high­ly cen­sored and dis­rupt­ed cor­re­spon­dence between the pris­on­ers and the out­side world fur­ther added to the atmos­phere of resent­ment and iso­la­tion among the cap­tives. While extra rations were indis­pens­able, the Indi­an Red Cross in Sim­la sent books, musi­cal instru­ments and games. A the­atre was con­struct­ed and sev­er­al plays were per­formed with full musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment and reli­gious rou­tines were main­tained as far as the con­di­tions allowed it (Thomas 1995, 275).

Bremen and Hamburg harbour

In addi­tion to the South Asian sea­men interned in Sand­bostel and Wes­t­er­imke, there were anoth­er approx­i­mate­ly 360 Indi­an las­cars held cap­tive in Ham­burg and Bre­men. All of them employ­ees of the Hansa Line, a Ger­man ship­ping com­pa­ny pre­dom­i­nant­ly call­ing at South Asian ports, they were detained in Sep­tem­ber 1939, when England’s dec­la­ra­tion of war to Ger­many led to a com­plete lock down of all eco­nom­ic rela­tions with India. At that time, sev­en ful­ly manned ships were anchored in Bre­men and two at the Ham­burg port. As their ships were denied voy­age, the South Asian sea­men found them­selves out of employ­ment and ground­ed in Ger­many. They were accom­mo­dat­ed either in make-shift arrange­ments in and around Bre­men city, where they were main­tained and guard­ed by the Hansa Line, or stayed on two small barges anchored in Ham­burg port.[5] As far as Bre­men is con­cerned, the Hansa Line ensured that they were pro­vid­ed with food pre­pared in agree­ment with their reli­gious beliefs and were even allowed to ven­ture out into the city in groups of ten.[6] Their sup­port for the las­cars hints to the ambigu­ous sit­u­a­tion cer­tain parts of the ship­ping indus­try found itself in dur­ing the war. Heav­i­ly rely­ing on their inter­na­tion­al work­force, they were less sup­port­ive of the nation­al­ist cause as, for exam­ple, the heavy indus­try. Some sea­men then found new employ­ment on Dutch steam­ers. Nev­er­the­less, at least two died in local hos­pi­tals.[7] Upon request of their for­mer employ­er, they were giv­en warm clothes from the fun­dus of the local police. In Ham­burg, the sit­u­a­tion was con­sid­er­ably less ami­ca­ble as the barges did not pro­vide suf­fi­cient shel­ter from the win­ter cli­mate for the ini­tial 94 las­cars. By Octo­ber 1939, already half of the crew was suf­fer­ing from pneu­mat­ic dis­eases.[8] On Feb­ru­ary 14, 1940, the remain­ing 65 las­cars in Ham­burg were joined with the 215 still stay­ing in Bre­men from where they were trans­port­ed to the Nether­lands. They were set free on the con­di­tion that they would not join ene­my ser­vice.[9]

Sources

The rel­e­vant hold­ings regard­ing South Asian civil­ian pris­on­ers in Ger­many dur­ing World War II are spread across three dif­fer­ent Ger­man state archives and one British col­lec­tion. As this is a pre­lim­i­nary overview, I do not rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty that there will be more mate­r­i­al in oth­er archives, for exam­ple in the archives of the Inter­na­tion­al Trac­ing Ser­vice in Bad Arolsen.[10]

Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts

Quan­ti­ta­tive­ly, the most sig­nif­i­cant mate­r­i­al is stored in the Poli­tis­ches Archiv des Auswär­ti­gen Amts (the Polit­i­cal Archive of the Fed­er­al For­eign Office) [PAAA]. It is struc­tured accord­ing to the prove­nance prin­ci­ple, reflect­ing the admin­is­tra­tive struc­ture of the Ger­man For­eign Office at a giv­en point in time. One branch caters only to the bureau­crat­ic out­put of the admin­is­tra­tion of the Third Reich. With­in this branch, the mate­r­i­al on the South Asian cap­tives is found in five files in the hold­ing Recht­san­gele­gen­heit­en (legal mat­ters) under the sub-sec­tion Kriegsrecht (mar­tial law) / Völk­er­recht (inter­na­tion­al law). The mate­r­i­al is par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant because it con­firms that Indi­an civil­ians were first interned in Sand­bostel before they were trans­ferred to Wes­t­er­imke, which has elud­ed his­tor­i­cal schol­ar­ly atten­tion so far. Per­haps most strik­ing­ly, the files con­tain dense mate­r­i­al on eight Indi­an mer­chants from Sind, per­ma­nent­ly resid­ing in Gibral­tar, who had been cap­tured in 1940 in the Indi­an Ocean on the S. S. Kem­men­dine on their way to India after hav­ing been evac­u­at­ed from Gibral­tar. They were interned as civ­il pris­on­ers first in Sta­lag X B and lat­er in Mar­lag and Milag Nord. Eager to be released to Tang­i­er, Span­ish Moroc­co, where they had long term busi­ness rela­tions, their cor­re­spon­dence with the Indi­an Mer­chant Asso­ci­a­tion in Tang­i­er, var­i­ous con­sulates and embassies, the Swiss lega­tion and, of course, the Ger­man author­i­ties, make for a fas­ci­nat­ing case study for the micro-his­to­ry of camp pol­i­tics. As they dis­cuss the finan­cial, geo­graph­ic and legal aspects of their pend­ing repa­tri­a­tion, insights into inter­na­tion­al war-time diplo­ma­cy from a bot­tom-up per­spec­tive can be gained. Despite their relent­less efforts, the British-Indi­ans were still in Ger­man cap­tiv­i­ty in March 1945.

Fur­ther, the hold­ing con­tains intern­ment lists of cap­tives of both Sta­lag X B and Mar­lag and Milag Nord, as well as camp inspec­tion reports of the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross in Gene­va and the Swiss lega­tion. Espe­cial­ly the lat­ter are valu­able sources as they pro­vide rare insights into the every­day life of the camps and the con­di­tions of intern­ment of South Asian civil­ian pris­on­ers viewed through the lens of inter­na­tion­al human­i­tar­i­an organizations.

Imperial War Museum, London

The hold­ing in the PAAA is inter­linked with a hold­ing in the Impe­r­i­al War Muse­um, Lon­don. Although the pri­vate papers of Cap­tain H. W. Jones have been stud­ied by schol­ars like Tony Lane (Lane 1990) and Gabe Thomas (Thomas 1995) and do not strict­ly fall under the cat­e­go­ry of mod­ern India in Ger­man archives, I am list­ing them here because they are cru­cial for a com­pre­hen­sive under­stand­ing of the civil­ian camp­scape of Word War II. Cap­tain H. W. Jones, Chief Offi­cer of the Har­rions Line’s S. S. Dales­man, manned with an Indi­an crew, was excep­tion­al in a num­ber of ways. Not only had he learned Hin­dus­tani, the lin­gua-fran­ca of North­ern India to com­mu­ni­cate with his staff, but also vol­un­teered to leave the officer’s camp to join the Indi­ans as their Con­fi­dence Offi­cer. At the Inder Lager, he applied his ener­gies to make life as tol­er­a­ble as pos­si­ble for the South Asians, who suf­fered more than the Euro­peans from the impo­si­tions of cap­tiv­i­ty. He inter­vened on their behalf for the prop­er con­sid­er­a­tion of their dietary require­ments in line with their reli­gious beliefs, made sure they were sup­plied with essen­tials, cloth­ing and blan­kets, helped with the cor­re­spon­dence in and out of the camp in the face of the Ger­man cen­sor, took respon­si­bil­i­ty of the camp wages and ensured a min­i­mum of leisure activ­i­ties to be avail­able for the inmates (Thomas 1995, 274–6). His pri­vate papers, stored in two card­board box­es, con­tain his copi­ous notes about life in the Inder Lager. He kept nom­i­nal lists of the Indi­an but also oth­er Asian, Caribbean and African cap­tives, a volu­mi­nous col­lec­tion of cor­re­spon­dences and peti­tions on behalf of the South Asians to their rel­a­tives at home as well as the local author­i­ties[11], bal­ance sheets, bills and receipts for rations, cin­e­ma tick­ets, sale of effects of the deceased and camp wages,[12] a camp diary of 1942, pho­tographs, gro­cery lists and dai­ly menus, and notes he had tak­en dur­ing the vis­it of the Swiss Lega­tion who inspect­ed Mar­lag in April 1944.[13] After the war, he brought every­thing back to Eng­land where it even­tu­al­ly came to rest in the cus­tody of the Impe­r­i­al War Muse­um after his death.

Bremen and Hamburg State Archive

Although the mate­r­i­al in the hold­ings of the Bre­men State Archive and the Ham­burg State Archive is less volu­mi­nous than the one in PAAA, their hold­ings are nev­er­the­less impor­tant as they open a win­dow into the pol­i­tics of intern­ment out­side the realm of the tra­di­tion­al prison camps. The 360 las­cars from Bom­bay and Cal­cut­ta of the Hansa Line were accom­mo­dat­ed in small barges in the port or hous­ing shel­ters in the port neigh­bour­hood with­in close prox­im­i­ty of the local urban population.

In the Bre­men State Archive, the file on the cap­tured South Asian sea­men is stored along­side doc­u­ments on for­eign work­force, social secu­ri­ty, labour issues, the Jew­ish ques­tion, air raid shel­ter and pris­on­ers of war as part of the hold­ing Sen­a­tor für Inneres, All­ge­meine Reg­i­s­tratur in Bre­men between 1919 – 1956.[14] The file itself, labelled Aus­län­der­polizeiliche Behand­lung indis­ch­er Staat­sange­höriger 1939 – 1940 (treat­ment of Indi­an nation­als by the for­eign­ers police), con­tains the cor­re­spon­dence between the Nation­al Social­ist police forces in Berlin and Bre­men, the may­or of Bre­men and his sen­a­tor of the inte­ri­or as well as its Ham­burg equiv­a­lent, the Hauptvere­ini­gung der deutschen Getrei­de- und Fut­ter­mit­tel­wirtschaft (the Ger­man grain and feed­stuff main asso­ci­a­tion) and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Hansa Line about the treat­ment of the cap­tured Indi­an las­cars. As the camp for civ­il pris­on­ers in Sand­bostel was not yet in oper­a­tion, the place­ment of the South Asian sea­men was a com­pli­cat­ed and press­ing issue for the author­i­ties. In a request to the Bre­men police, the Hansa Line emphat­i­cal­ly urges the for­mer to keep the las­cars in Bre­men and in the cus­tody of the ship­ping line, as only from here they could ensure their prop­er treat­ment includ­ing the prepa­ra­tion of meals along their reli­gious beliefs and region­al back­ground and their safe­guard­ing against cold weath­er.[15] Issues revolved around the import and clear­ance of rice and tea by the cus­toms and around find­ing an accept­able and afford­able loca­tion for their accom­mo­da­tion. A gro­cery list divid­ing the crew between peo­ple from Cal­cut­ta and Bom­bay sheds light into the respec­tive dietary require­ments from the per­spec­tive of their employ­ers. A com­pre­hen­sive enu­mer­a­tion of all las­cars interned, stat­ing their names, pro­fes­sions, age and place of recruit­ment, allows insights into the social com­po­si­tion of the mar­itime work­force. Even­tu­al­ly, it was agreed to deport the Indi­ans to Eng­land. The Ham­burg and Bre­men las­cars were pooled and sent by train to be hand­ed over to the British vice con­sul on Feb­ru­ary 14 of 1940 in Rot­ter­dam.[16] As opposed to the mer­chant cap­tured on the S. S. Kem­men­dine, the Bre­men and Ham­burg las­cars had a (finan­cial­ly) strong lob­by nego­ti­at­ing on their behalf. As a result, they were released from Ger­many after a rel­a­tive­ly short peri­od of six months in cap­tiv­i­ty, where­as the mer­chants from Gibral­tar stayed in camp through­out the entire war despite their relent­less efforts.

The Hansa Line las­cars also appear in the Ham­burg State Archive, how­ev­er not in the hold­ing of a gov­ern­ment min­istry but of a med­ical insti­tu­tion, the Hafe­narzt (har­bour physi­cian). The unique insti­tu­tion was cre­at­ed in 1893 in reac­tion to the severe cholera epi­dem­ic that struck Ham­burg in 1892 with the objec­tive of a per­ma­nent san­i­tary con­trol of the ships, crews and pas­sen­gers enter­ing Ham­burg port from over­seas. Besides the hygien­ic super­vi­sion of ves­sels and water, fight­ing (trop­i­cal) dis­eases in the har­bour also fell under the scope of func­tions of the Hafe­narzt. There­fore, in 1939, the med­ical treat­ment of the Ham­burg las­cars, lodged in nar­row barges owned by the Hansa Line anchored in the port fell under this institution’s field of respon­si­bil­i­ty. The doc­tor in charge in 1939, Dr. Kuck­en­burg, saw ill las­cars dur­ing his office hours and trans­ferred them to hos­pi­tals in Ham­burg if their con­di­tion required it. More­over, the barges were inspect­ed at least once by pub­lic health author­i­ties and were labelled absolute­ly inap­pro­pri­ate for hous­ing the South Asian sea­men.[17] Expect­ing the immi­nent trans­fer of the las­cars to Bre­men, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Hansa Line, Cap­tain Oetk­er, was not as ded­i­cat­ed to the lascar’s well­be­ing as his coun­ter­parts in Bre­men, who had reject­ed the idea of accom­mo­dat­ing the las­cars on ships on human­i­tar­i­an grounds.

Where­as the Bre­men files reveal the posi­tion of cap­i­tal in cor­re­spon­dence with the state and police author­i­ties, the Ham­burg files look at the same group of peo­ple from the per­spec­tive of hygiene. Dri­ven by the fear of an epi­dem­ic in the port area, the Ham­burg health author­i­ties and not the employ­ers pressed for bet­ter liv­ing con­di­tions for the cap­tives. In Bre­men, the employer’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to care for a loy­al work­force was the dri­ving force behind the nego­ti­a­tion on the las­cars’ behalf. In com­bi­na­tion with the mate­r­i­al in the PAAA and the pri­vate papers of Cap­tain H.W. Jones, a sys­tem­at­ic analy­sis of the liv­ing con­di­tions of South Asian sea­men before the back­ground of dif­fer­ent pro­tect­ing bod­ies, be it their employ­ers, their supe­ri­ors, inspec­tors of the health author­i­ties or the Swiss Lega­tion or the absence there­of is possible.

Conclusion

One of the main objec­tives of the MIDA Archival Reflex­i­con is to draw atten­tion to small­er archives and pri­vate col­lec­tions housed in Ger­man archives, which may offer new insights into the entan­gled his­to­ries as well as their accom­pa­ny­ing entan­gled archives out­side the realm of the colo­nial British archives. The numer­i­cal­ly rather lim­it­ed hold­ings on South Asian civ­il pris­on­ers in Ger­man cap­tiv­i­ty spread out over mul­ti­ple archives may seem insignif­i­cant when stud­ied as iso­lat­ed enti­ties. How­ev­er, when analysed with regard to their inter­re­lat­ed nature, their rel­e­vance for his­to­ri­og­ra­phy becomes vis­i­ble. As the hold­ings com­ple­ment and cor­rob­o­rate each oth­er, only the restruc­tur­ing of the archival order along the­mat­ic lines reveals pos­si­ble research avenues. With archives as diverse as the PAAA, the Ham­burg and Bre­men State Archive and the Impe­r­i­al War Muse­um in Lon­don, and hold­ings rang­ing from pri­vate papers to the doc­u­ments of the har­bour physi­cian, there unfolds an inter­sect­ed puz­zle of sources yet to be sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly engaged with.

New research per­spec­tives, as I have out­lined in this essay, include the human­i­tar­i­an and social con­di­tions of the camps as well as the every-day life of South Asian pris­on­ers. More­over, the influ­ence of inter­na­tion­al diplo­ma­cy and lob­by­ing on these con­di­tions as well as on the internees’ chances of lib­er­a­tion and repa­tri­a­tion can be scru­ti­nized through these sources. Whether it was for per­son­al sym­pa­thy and gen­er­al human­i­tar­i­an con­sid­er­a­tions, in the inter­est of cap­i­tal or for the fear of a health cri­sis, out­side inter­ven­tion on the pris­on­ers’ behalf sig­nif­i­cant­ly improved their over­all sit­u­a­tion. How­ev­er, no mat­ter how strong the lob­by, their expe­ri­ence in camp was gen­er­al­ly unpleas­ant, if not trau­ma­tiz­ing, and some­times even dead­ly, as the mate­r­i­al has also shown.

Anoth­er pos­si­ble tra­jec­to­ry for his­to­ri­og­ra­phy is a com­par­a­tive study of the camps for South Asian civ­il pris­on­ers dur­ing World War I, on which there already exists a fair­ly sig­nif­i­cant body of pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary sources, and their coun­ter­parts in World War II. Pos­si­ble van­tage points are the imple­men­ta­tion of Ger­man pro­pa­gan­da among the South Asians, the con­di­tions of their inter­ment, modes of resis­tance to the camp regime as well as their own per­spec­tive on the war.

These sug­ges­tions are by no means exhaus­tive and can eas­i­ly be expand­ed to oth­er fields of research.

Endnotes

[1]PAAA_R40967, p. 51.
[2]PAAA_R40967, p. 40.
[3]PAAA_R40967, p. 59.
[4]PAAA_R40967, p. 81
[5]StaHH, 352–7 I Hafe­narzt I, Nr. 42 , Abschrift aus dem Bericht des Gesund­htsb. Maak vom 23. Sept.
[6]StaB, 13/1‑P.1.f.Nr. 35 (2981) Aus­län­der­polizeiliche Behand­lung indis­ch­er Staat­sange­höriger 1939–1940, p. 16.
[7]StaB, 13/1‑P.1.f.Nr. 35, p. 36.
[8]StaHH, 352–7 I Hafe­narzt I, Nr. 42, Hand­schriftliche Notiz.
[9]StaB, 13/1‑P.1.f.Nr. 35, p. 33.
[10]

See also the entry by Van­dana Joshi which deals with the sources on Indi­an civil­ians and sol­diers housed in ITS archive in Bad Arolsen.

[11]

14/10/1/1; 14/10/1/2, Pri­vate Papers of Cap­tain H. W. Jones.

[12]

14/10/1/2; Pri­vate Papers of Cap­tain H. W. Jones.

[13]

14/10/2, Pri­vate Papers of Cap­tain H. W. Jones.

[14]

StaB, 4,13/1 — Sen­a­tor für Inneres, All­ge­meine Reg­i­s­tratur (1940–1956).

[15]

StaB, 13/1‑P.1.f.Nr. 35, p. 8–9.

[16]

StaB, 13/1‑P.1.f.Nr. 35, p. 33–34.

[17]

StaHH, 352–7 I Hafe­narzt I, Nr. 42, Abschrift aus dem Bericht des Gesund­htsb. Maak vom 23. Sept. 1939.

Bibliography

Unpublished Sources (holdings)

Staat­sarchiv Ham­burg, 352–7 I Hafe­narzt I

Staat­sarchiv Bre­men, 4,13/1 — Sen­a­tor für Inneres, All­ge­meine Reg­i­s­tratur (1940–1956)

Impe­r­i­al War Muse­um, Lon­don, Pri­vate Papers of Cap­tain H. W. Jones

Poli­tis­ches Archiv des Auswär­ti­gen Amts, Bestand Recht­san­gele­gen­heit­en, Kriegsrecht / Völkerrecht

Published Sources and Secondary Literature

Ehres­mann, Andreas, Das Sta­lag X B Sand­bostel. Geschichte und Nachgeschichte eines Kriegs­ge­fan­genen­lagers. München/Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz Ver­lag, 2015.

Hill, Cap­tain A., Some expe­ri­ences of SS Man­da­sor and her Crew dur­ing World War. Edin­burgh, 1947.

Lane, Tony, The Mer­chant Seamen’s War, Liv­er­pool: The Blue­coat Press, 1990.

Liebau, Heike, “A voice record­ing, a por­trait pho­to and three draw­ings: trac­ing the life of a colo­nial sol­dier”.  In ZMO Work­ing Papers (20/2018), pp. 1–14.

Gabe, Thomas, Milag: cap­tives of the Kriegs­ma­rine. Mer­chant Navy pris­on­ers of war. Pon­tar­dawe, Swansea: Milag Pris­on­er of War Asso­ci­a­tion, 1995.

Roy, Franziska, “Indi­an Sea­men in World War I Prison Camps in Ger­many”. In Südasien-Chronik — South Asia Chron­i­cle (5/2015) pp. 63–91.

Roy, Franziska, Heike Liebau and Ravi Ahu­ja (eds.), When the war began we heard of sev­er­al kings. South Asian pris­on­ers in World War I Ger­many.  New Del­hi: Social Sci­ence Press, 2011.

Sven­ja von Jan, CeMIS, Georg-August-Uni­ver­sität Göttingen

MIDA Archival Reflex­i­con

Edi­tors: Anan­di­ta Baj­pai, Heike Liebau
Lay­out: Mon­ja Hof­mann, Nico Putz
Host: ZMO, Kirch­weg 33, 14129 Berlin
Con­tact: archival.reflexicon [at] zmo.de

ISSN 2628–5029